by Tuvia Fogel
As was the custom in Western commanderies, the brothers sang the 133rd Psalm in French. Arnald joined them, finding it even more moving than in Latin.
Oh, qu’ il est bon, qu’ il est doux
Pour des frères de se trouver réunis ensemble!
C’est comme l’huile précieuse, repandue sur la tête
Qui coule sur la barbe, sur la barbe d’Aaron,
Qui coule jusqu’au bord de ses vêtements.
Despite the white cloak with the red cross, he wasn’t quite like the other monks yet, his blond mane contrasting with his new brothers’ shaved heads. But Arnald, as he sang, wasn’t aware of it.
The next morning, de Montrodon summoned him to the tower. Skipping all monkish rhetoric, the master of Provence came right to the point.
“What made you stay and fight for ten years? You don’t look like a knight in search of martyrdom. If you were, you would have joined an order much sooner. Why become a Templar now, Arnald?”
Arnald expected this question from his superiors and had prepared a sentimental response. “It’s Jerusalem, Master. The Holy City cast a spell on me. Christian knights can only visit as unarmed pilgrims, but I managed to stay with some Saracens for months at a time.”
De Montrodon was listening with a puzzled look on his face.
“You see, Master,” went on Arnald, “After a while, it’s no longer the holy places or even the promise of salvation that matter. It’s the city herself, her light, her alleys. . . .”
“And how does that answer my question, Brother Arnald?”
“I want Jerusalem to be Christian again! I want thirty years of humiliations of Christians there to end! Only the Templars really want that to happen, so if I’m going to fight anyway I decided to do it in the only way that will make a difference.”
“Mmph!” snorted de Montrodon, a cloud of cynicism casting a shadow on the smile in his eyes. “Nice try, Arifat. With your troubadour background, it could have worked, but I’ve no time for games. The temple knows all about your past role as an agent of the Cathar church. More to the point, we know that before Innocent’s war started, you took the Parchment of Circles to the Holy Land!”
Arnald was caught off balance. This was why de Montrodon was here, not because he knew him from Syria! But the old man to whom he’d given the parchment was a chaplain of the temple! The safety of the order was what the Cathar bishops sought for the parchment, so why did they not have it? What had the chaplain done with it? Or had the Templars lost it?
“Lost your tongue, Arnald? You know Cathars have nothing to fear from the temple.”
Arnald was thinking as fast as he could. This was more than he or Boson had anticipated. The best he could do at this point was try to find out what the Templars knew. “What do you want to know about the parchment?” he asked, feigning coolness and failing miserably.
“First, what was on it, and second, whom you gave it to,” said de Montrodon drily.
“Well, I saw it ten years ago, as you know, and my Greek is nothing special. I remember nine phrases or single words, symmetrically placed on two circles so that they formed a cross: four on the outer circle, four on the inner circle, and one in the center. . . .”
“But surely your bishops, your superiors, knew enough Greek to read the text. Don’t tell me you were forbidden to know what it said.”
“No, no! That would be the Catholic way!” exclaimed Arnald, piqued. “They did tell me; I just don’t remember that much. You know, theological formulae don’t have that strong an appeal for me. . . .”
De Montrodon threw off his mask of cordiality. “You’re a monk now, Brother Arnald. I could order you to stay in this Godforsaken post for the rest of your days.”
Arnald shook his head glibly, appalled at the prospect. “All right, all right. I don’t remember everything, but the five Greek phrases across, from left to right, were ‘Heart of the Messiah’ on the outer circle, ‘Soul’ on the inner one, ‘The Heavens’ in the center, ‘the Oil’ on the right side of the inner circle, and ‘Sacrifice of the Heart’ on the right side of the outer one. The words on the vertical arm of the cross included ‘My Spirit’ and at the bottom, on the outer circle, were the words ‘In Jerusalem.’ There, that’s really all I remember!”
De Montrodon was nodding slowly. Then he asked, “And who has it now?”
“That’s what I don’t understand! We thought you had it!”
De Montrodon smiled an “I knew it” smile. “I see. Well, Brother Arnald, the man to whom you gave the Parchment is a crafty old bastard indeed. The trouble is he had the last Grand Master’s ear for a long time. But Guillaune de Chartres, as you know, died at Damietta last August and the new master, Pedro de Montaigu, is unlikely to fall for the old man’s fables.”
The master got up tiredly. “I assume your real reason for entering the order is that your Cathar bishops want a spy in our ranks. We can handle that, Brother Arnald; we’ll keep an eye on you. Don’t worry your head about it. Start training to fight by the Rule, and when the commander says you’re ready, go back to Acre and present yourself to the new Grand Master . . . if you can find him.”
De Montrodon walked away, leaving Arnald wondering if in those “old man’s fables,” he had just come across the first trace of the secret cabal his bishops were looking for.
Hidden behind the scaffolding for the construction of the bishop’s new palace, the Church of the Magdalene in Narbonne was a modest affair, all that was left of the monastery behind the cathedral of which Boson would be the last abbot, since the bishop’s plans envisioned new buildings all the way to the end of the Rue Droite.
For ten years, Narbonne’s bishops had once more been elected by the pope and not by the Count of Toulouse. There was no more tolerance for perfecti, and Cathars were chased out of shops like bandits. Abbot Boson led a dangerous life and knew it. He gave refuge to perfecti on the run from Domingo’s friars and passed messages between his harried hosts, supporting what troubador Raymond Jordan had named la Resistance.
The sacristy was in an old Merovingian tower behind the church. In his study on the third and last floor, the abbot was poring over a manuscript on his scriptorium, a carved wooden pulpit on top of which, instead of standing and preaching, one sits and writes. He heard noises in the yard, followed by heavy steps on the stairs. His heart froze in sudden premonition, and he entrusted his soul to God.
The Templar entered without knocking and went to stand in front of the window, his back to the scriptorium. His right hand swept his cloak back over the left shoulder, exposing the hilt of his sword.
Robert de Bois-Guilbert, thickset and not very tall, was in his late forties. His face, even from thirty paces, was that of an English noble of Norman descent, with the smile of a man who cannot be surprised by anything, be it even the trumpets of Judgment Day. In this he was like his father, afraid of nothing on earth or in Heaven. In the glory days of Coeur-de-Lion, Brian de Bois-Guilbert had been the bravest Templar fighting for the king. As well as fighting skills and a kind of atheist bravado, Robert had inherited all four vices sadly associated with Templars: conceit, arrogance, cruelty, and lewdness.
Just as Boson was feeling relief at the white cloak—after all, a Templar knight would never be doing the bidding of Domingo’s friars—the contempt in Bois-Guilbert’s voice struck him like a whip. “Come down from there, Boson! I don’t like having to look up when I talk to Cathar scum!”
Robert, a hugely vain tombeur de femmes, was nearly bald and hid the fact by wearing a leather cap, but with no chainmail coff under it. He pulled it off as he waited for Boson to descend the spiral staircase and then suddenly struck him a backhanded slap so strong it sent the old cleric flying across the floorboards. “I know everything about you, you heretical worm!” he said, calmly slipping off the only glove he was wearing as he watched the black habit struggling to get up. “I know you host Cathar bishops, and you hide forbidden marriages from the church. I even know of your Jewish friends!
What I don’t know is what that serpent Arifat was doing here yesterday. But you’re going to tell me that, aren’t you, Boson?”
The Templar lifted the abbot with his right arm, keeping him at a distance, as if disgusted by the bad smell. He curled his nose, as if suffering from an attack of bad digestion.
“But . . . but you’re a Templar,” murmured Boson weakly.
“Yes, but not one of those you’re used to speaking with! My loyalty is to the pope and to the Holy Trinity, not to the masters of a corrupted order!”
“Good God, a zealous Templar,” thought Boson. “My hour has come . . .”
“There is . . . there is nothing to tell about Arifat,” he stammered. “He came to confess himself because he has decided to join your order . . .”
“Pfui! Another rotten apple. Soon there will be more heretics than Christians in the temple!”
Robert smiled and then grabbed the collar of Boson’s habit with both hands and lifted him a foot off the floor. His face was distorted into a mask of hate. The mouth in it hissed, “He confessed to you, scum, because he couldn’t tell a real bishop the things he told you, which you will now repeat to me, including any details your hobbled mind may find irrelevant.”
He dropped the black habit. He had known that torturing the old man wouldn’t be of any use, so he’d told his partner—the Teutonic knight with whom he carried out Father Domingo’s wishes—to grab two urchins in the street below before he came into the sacristy. At Robert’s low whistle, the German dragged them up the stairs. When Boson saw Frutolf enter the study, he blanched.
The Teuton was huge, nearly seven feet tall, his head so incredibly square it seemed drawn with a ruler. Fleshy lips made his expression one of petulance on the verge of violence. In a single hand he clutched, just below the shoulders, the skinny arms of two children, no more than six or seven years old. He dragged them into the room as Robert unnecessarily revealed his intentions to the abbot.
“Listen, scum. If you don’t repeat Arifat’s confession word for word to me, these innocents will die before your eyes, their throats slit like lambs, and their blood will stain your soul in eternity”—he paused—“together with all your other sins, of course.”
Frutolf pulled a dagger from his waist with his free hand and placed the point against the neck of a child, so terrified it wasn’t even whimpering.
“Then we’ll put the bodies in a sack and throw them in a Jew’s house—eh, Frutolf? What do you say?” joked the Templar. The German laughed, but without enthusiasm.
Boson gathered his wits and addressed Robert in a low voice. “Do I have your word of honor that if I tell you everything you will let the children go?”
“Oohh, look at the heretic’s beautiful soul! Did you hear, Frutolf? He doesn’t want the innocent to suffer in his place. So be it! You have my word.”
The murmur of the abbot relating Arnald’s confession was only broken by the occasional sob of a child. He hesitated before mentioning the Parchment of Circles but went on as soon as Frutolf ’s blade had drawn a trickle of blood from the smaller child’s neck. Frutolf had to put the dagger back in its sheath to stifle the child’s cries with his free hand.
As soon as he’d mentioned the Parchment, Boson knew they’d have to kill him, so that none would find out a Templar knew where the Holy Texts were taken. As he related the many occasions in which Arnald had sinned in Outremer, the abbot prayed ceaselessly, asking God to save not his soul, but the lives of the children and Arnald’s.
When Robert was convinced—at the price of some more innocent blood—that the old man really didn’t know in which commanderie Arnald’s initiation was to take place, he went back to the window and gazed out over the roofs of Narbonne.
“I decided not to have Frutolf follow the seigneur faidit, despite knowing that I risked losing his tracks, and now it turns out I did the right thing, as always! Instead of shaking us off, the stupid Cathar has gone and joined the temple! Now finding him again will be child’s play! And what I learned from this heretic abbot is sure to please my mentor. . . .” He turned around with a sticky smile and gestured for the abbot to join him. When Boson stood next to him, he whispered, “And now, mon brave Boson, you’ll save the lives of the infants once again by jumping from this window. I’ve heard that taking one’s life is a very respected religious sacrament, among perfecti. . . .”
“But you gave me your word that if I told you everything . . .”
“I gave you my word I would let the children go, and I will! I never said what I would do with you. . . . Jump from this window now, or you’ll see the little ones die first and then be dealt with yourself!”
The old man mumbled a prayer, climbed awkwardly over the sill and stepped into the void.
The Templar’s silence made him seem moved, but the German knight’s guttural laugh behind him ruined the effect he had sought.
Twelve years earlier, Domingo had founded a convent for converted ex-Cathar women near the village of Prouilhe, down the hill from Fanjeaux on the way to Montréal. Endless demands on his time pushed the founder of the Order of Preachers from one realm to the next, but his advancing sickness convinced him not to travel during Lent, and he only left Guadalajara after Easter. Robert knew he could find his mentor in Prouilhe from the middle of April until early May, when Domingo would press on to Paris.
Prouilhe was a day’s ride from Narbonne, a distance Bois-Guilbert hadn’t ridden in years. He forced Frutolf ’s horse to a pace that was too slow for both beasts, making the Teuton seethe in silence. Robert thought back to the night hunts with his father in Berkshire, galloping through the forest, torches suddenly splashing the onrushing trees with red and yellow. His father, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, a minor member of the royal household, left his mother when Robert was a child to join the temple and spent years in Outremer trying to climb the order’s hierarchy, chasing a dream of becoming master. When Robert was fifteen, he died in a stupid joust in England, fighting to prove the guilt of a Jewish sorceress. Robert never forgave his father or the order, and later joined the temple himself to bring about its ruin from within, the only revenge for his mother he found fitting.
His dark spleen made him rule out the existence of any salvation for the scum of humanity, which to him meant all of it except perhaps a man in a thousand. Then he’d met Domingo, and the monk’s spiritual guidance miraculously undermined his cynicism. Though he would have denied it, Robert loved his Spanish mentor like a father and would have done anything he asked. Following Domingo’s cunning instructions, he befriended the powerful in the order, intimidated the weak, and gathered information on everyone, none excepted.
The two riders sighted Fanjeaux two hours before sunset. They were worn out, and a cold breeze slipped through their clothes. They slowed the horses and took the path to the convent of the Predicatores. The place was deserted, as if abandoned.
Open doors slammed in the wind, animals wandered around the buildings, and a wheelbarrow full of hay sat in the middle of the yard. The knights dismounted and split up to reconnoiter. In a clear sign that their experience came from Outremer, not from jousting tournaments, they moved around the convent as if expecting an ambush behind every well-trimmed hedge.
The first nun they nearly frightened to death solved the riddle. Father Domingo had not been well on the trip from Castille and started work again too hard and too soon. An hour earlier, while hearing a sister’s confession, he suddenly fainted. The nuns, every one a soul rescued from heresy, dropped everything and rushed to the founder’s bedside.
For the hundredth time—the Teuton was no longer counting—Robert left Frutolf outside as he met someone important. Frutolf knew Domingo had the pope’s ear, and that since word spread of his illness he was sure to be sainted the minute he left this vale of tears. Not meeting him was the latest humiliation Frutolf suffered since he’d been assigned to do the Templar’s bidding.
Robert entered the founder’s room. Floor and shelves were full of cod
ices, and there were parchments everywhere. Domingo lay on a cot in the corner, and two women, one a nun, the other a local peasant, both young and pretty, hovered over him. Domingo saw the knowing smile on Robert’s lips and pushed the girls away and then greeted him in a voice so weak the Templar almost didn’t recognize it.
“Christ’s peace be with you, Brother Roberto. Yes, despite my best efforts, I cannot help preferring to spend my time with young women than with old ones. . . .” The monk smiled as he pulled himself up on his pillows. “But these are things for my confessor, not for you, Roberto. And the time for adding up my vices and virtues has not come yet. I still have too many things to do.”
Honorius, the new pope who had replaced Innocent three years earlier, had been showering donations on his Predicatores, and everything he’d planned for ten years started happening at a frightening pace. Ironically, in the same three years, his illness became more severe.
He sat up in bed as a nun rushed to rearrange the pillows behind his back. He was recovering from the lastest bout of fever, and the visit by his protégé inside the temple helped revive him. Robert bent over his teacher. Domingo kissed him on the cheeks and drew a sign of the cross on his forehead.
“Reverend Father,” said Robert, “do you remember that seigneur faidit in Outremer you asked me to not lose sight of, some years ago?”
“Certainly. Arnald Arifat. The memory of the time I learned his name still plagues me.”
Domingo thought of the morning after the disputatio with the rabbi, when he convinced Pons to tell him what the Jew had been doing in the Hots’ kitchen. If that Master Ezekiel was looking after the child of a heretic, the man couldn’t be any old Cathar. Now Roberto was bringing him the fruit of the seed he’d planted. Robert eagerly announced that Abbot Boson made some interesting revelations.